Effect of Defects Distribution on Fatigue Life of Wind Turbine Components

The reliability of the component of a wind turbine is often highly dependent on defects introduced during the manufacturing process. In this paper a stochastic model is proposed for modeling these defects and the influence on the fatigue life is considered. Basically the defects assumed distributed by a Poisson process / field where the defects form clusters that consist of a parent defect and related defects around the parent defect. The fatigue life is dependent on the number, type, location and size of the defects in the component and is therefore quite uncertain and needs to be described by stochastic models. In this paper, the Poisson distribution for modeling of defects of component are considered and the surface and sub-surface defects categorized. Furthermore, a model to estimate the probability of failure by fatigue due to the defects is proposed. Moreover, the relation between defect distribution and fatigue life of component explained.